became
Belief runs in 'cycles'. There was an upsurge in agnosticism in the 300's, in the Roman empire, as the newly 'top dog' Church of Christ became more militant and repressive.
the various Gnostic churches based in Alexandria were rather cruelly repressed. Unfortunate, as a lot of the early material on Jesus was destroyed.
Although research into the old testament was rudimentary, the intellectual community of the Roman empire was aware of the vast incongruity between the early history of the old testament and the observable facts.
http://stuff.digitalock.com/ringoffire.mp3
You're reminding me of when they killed that woman who understood classical science. Her death marked the end of the classical age and opened to the dark age.
Indeed... but they didn't have the social-psychological research available today.
http://stuff.digitalock.com/raggletagglegypsio_dancemix.mp3
My bet is people then became so neurotic trying to figure out how to function in city-empire sized organizations when their genetic nature was to operate as hunter-gatherer tribes maxing out at 300 couples such that they'd split and form new tribes if it got bigger than that, like Hutterites do today, in order to avoid tyrany and brainwashing.
http://stuff.digitalock.com/princeigor.mp3
They did not have the advantage of Rockefeller paid-back-by-virtue-of-Christian-social-standards research like we do now. Capitalism feeds back onto itself to build up a single entity owning everything, which could be a corporation with shares owned by everyone.
Back then, "Follow the Money" meant Barons and Dukesters conquering territories in order to increase tax revenue, with the Church regulating.
Now it's Bond Holders taking on Stock Investors, with the SEC regulating.
So... we're a bunch of a*hole conquerers, such that God and His first great mistake Lucifer are slamming heads over which way we can be droned into fighting for who, when the answer from this bunch of dust-puppies is we want to live where we are happy.
"My Father's house had many rooms".
I want to be in the one with Rocky Mountains with clear streams and lots of trees so it's not hurting anything to take branches and make a fire.
No, it's nothing at all like saying that, you haven't the slightest idea what's going on in this conversation. The deaths associated with religiously-based aggression, like the Inquisition, the Crusades, the centuries of Catholics versus Protestants wars that convulsed Europe in the past, and more recently religiously motivated terrorism, were directly and explicitly justified on religious grounds. The deaths that lie at the feet of communism were not justified on atheist grounds, they were people the various thugs in charge perceived as threats, or just didn't like, atheism had nothing to do with it. Atheism is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for behaving badly. Religion is not a necessary condition, but it's often sufficient.
It's what happens when bad Gammas get control. They do things like march around accusing women of being witches, and then require part of the atonement be that they get to have a feast on the woman's estate.
